Well, it did not start out of the blue - likely, as well as the story, or at least a curiosity towards raw-food lifestyle, of my dear reader! In addition, my story had a lot more behind than just a pursuit of a diet for the sake of diet.
A long-term path was lined with observations from my early childhood when my mom was making sprouts that were her main nutrition, as well introducing me to soy products that were a cheap alternative to meat back then (we lived in need). Notably, she was barely having any food and she was extremely active, fit, never having colds, despite walking in a thin jacket and with no hat in extreme Siberian colds and working as a teacher. Later, my mom’s (and mine of course) lifestyle changed due to the changes in her personal life, but my memories of her extravagant habits are what remained and what I kept as an example.
Moving forward, my proactive and independent, real five-years-long path commenced when I moved to the United States at the age of 21. Ironically, everyone back in Russia were asking me about burgers, packaged foods, and whether I starve there, as there is a stereotype that Americans do not eat produce and don’t even know how vegetables and fruits look like. In contrast, during my first week in the U.S., where I came to pursue my Doctorate degree in Engineering, I was invited to Whole Foods market and got blown away with the abundance of wholesome organic foods and greens that were laying beautifully on the shelves in the store decorated to convey the atmosphere of a cozy outdoors market! Being an artist, I got sparked with so much inspiration as if I was wandering around an art store picking paints and brushes! The subject of art this time was myself though - I was getting the matter that was going to build my body. I remember, that time I got a week worth of supply of mangoes, nuts, and berries - something I was not able to afford living in Russia, and each morning I was devouring that luxury with a great gratitude for being able to have that abundance and beauty in my life. It might sound funny that a bag of fruits and nuts made such an existential value in my life, but it truly felt like an honor that I was supposed to give to myself, but had never given before. I would say that the lifestyle I was gradually evolving to sustain, indeed, became my art. Having access to the “artistic resources”, I started researching the “theory“, “composition“, and “techniques“. I was earning a PhD stipend of ~$1800 a month paying $600 in rent, and most of my money was going towards quality organic food at that time, and it felt right, and towards dining out, and it was not right. I had my old habits and was going out a lot, so I added some healthy components on top of the comfort and restaurant foods, which definitely made a difference, but being a perpetual restaurants’ and coffee-shops’ customer with a five o’clock muffin tradition I was gaining weight and I did not feel in my prime for sure!
Back in Russia at that time and in the crowd I belonged to, plant-based lifestyle was not accepted and was actively judged, so I had a strong bias and skepticism whenever I met people who would describe the beauty of such a lifestyle, so in the U.S. I was impressed with how well compared it was accepted, however, I was very far from being able to accept the idea of drastically cutting or especially eliminating animal products from my diet. But, ironically, information and people, as live examples, started coming my way opening my mind to the perspective of plant-based diet and to the benefits and beauty of such diet. Over the following 4 years, I gradually reduced the amount of meat and fish I was consuming (I never had a taste for dairy, and especially could not stand cheese, and only started being fed with dairy in my adolescence when my parents got scared that I was not getting enough calcium during puberty, so I eliminated it with pleasure during the first year of my U.S. living). In fact, me going raw, 100% plant-based was my first time completely removing animal products from my diet. An inclination to go plant-based went hand-in-hand with my desperation to develop in spiritual realms because stresses and challenges of the PhD life were becoming too hard to cope with at times causing me to have insomnia, panic attacks, extreme weight loss, and loss of meaning, so I needed to search for the resources that would help to regenerate my mind and overcome the crises. I started learning Kundalini meditations because I resonated with the practice that would go in depth of the body work and establish a connection of all body elements from root to the top to the source that is so important to be aware of at all times! Doing regular meditations, I realized how differently this body-mind-source system responds to the foods taken beforehand, and it made me very sensitive to the animal products.
Recalling the moment of making an active decision which happened on January 1, 2021, I can say that it was a momentary realization, like everything finally came together: both my body and my soul were asking for it, and my rational mind felt comfortable with that as it acquired enough profound evidence and knowledge to allow the change with no hesitation. I was experimenting with periods of raw eating during the Orthodox lent and in between the seasons following my ancestor’s traditions, while being mostly plant-based outside of the lent throughout 2019 and 2020, but something in me was not quite set to make the transition yet, up until 2021 came. The observations and revelations of the year of 2020 turned my mind and, through showing me the vast darkness, through revealing the most terrifying truth about the prospects of living in a system, enslaving everyone who would lose just a tiny bit of awareness. These realizations did not leave any other option for me than to switch my whole spirit and psyche towards the realms of full-force creative and free living. I basically felt that unless I take an action, unless I rewrite my whole system, my life would rapidly slip out of my control and my free will will be readily taken. I could not allow that because my biggest value in life is freedom. So the dietary change came as a part of the holistic and intuitive process, again, enabled by enough knowledge and foundation of experience to let it happen. And I have enough statistical proof that information always comes to us when the time is right and we are ready to have our deepest questions addressed.
When you start questioning everything, especially the things and phenomena that you observe routinely, you start realizing how non-optimized and in fact, how screwed up people tend to live. Whatever is designed by nature and governed by the physics and interconnection of all systems nowadays is being laughed at, as if a human being is supposed to be artificially taken out, away from its natural and infinite synergistic resource and placed in a synthetic nutritional substrate (that some creature in a white lab coat needs to refill regularly to support the vitality of the subject) to be progressive and go hand-in-hand with the pitiful artificial “optimization” of a refined and incredibly abundant nature and its ecosystems. The whole system seems to support impulsive, hysterical attitude towards material and non-material information, instead of following a steady and calm flow. Human is a bio-social entity and enabling a functional, versatile biological component is often a prerequisite for a prosperous and creative life and capable longevity. And an escape from the system that tries to convince everyone otherwise starts with asking questions. Why do we live like that? What progress is really the progress and which manufactured commodities and phenomena in fact lead to a regress? Why are our brains rapidly changing towards clip thinking and turning to obedience and seeking for a responsible authority (a parental figure) instead of exploration of one’s unleashed creative potential and pure self-awareness, and why are children being taught confusing absurdity instead of the classical fundamental sciences and logical reasoning? And, of course, why do we eat what we eat and why is there such a cult around food? Why do we consume what does not exist in nature and is proven to do harm? Why do we need to murder so much life to feel nurtured? Why is it claimed that thermally treated food is “better", “preferred“ than raw food, even though all dietary recommendations are based off of the nutritional contents of the raw products and are nowhere close in their properties if we were to compare living and thermally processed foods, leave alone more subtle, energetic differences? Why does no one talk about the importance of natural regulation, self-healing, adjusting the lifestyle for prevention of body degeneration? Why is it normal to mark the stages of life with the diseases and medicines one should “normally“ start taking at each chapter of their lives? Why do we only get exposed to the outdated information about health management that was gathered on the wave of the obsession with allopathy and that has nothing in common with the outcomes of the honest and non-corrupt studies? Why are we hypnotized to “trust“ what is being told instead of being encouraged to think, experiment, and make decisions ourselves? All these and many more questions found 2 answers. First (direct answer): the system needs complacency and life force of each element to sustain the system. Second (creative, projective answer): no one actually forces anyone to be a part of the system and donate their life force to maintaining the motion of the system, so it is up to choosing what to do and deciding to take complete responsibility for one’s body, mind, environment, and actions in order to thrive and finally move out to a higher energy state.
When I achieved clarity on all these matters and made my decision on how I will be moving from that deep crisis that made me question the meaning of the very existence, it coincided with my momentary switching to raw diet. Raw discipline, raw mind, raw loyalty to the principles, raw intuition, raw connection, raw honesty, raw mind expansion, raw intensive transition - everything as nature intended for the union of mind and body. I was equipped with much knowledge on how to properly design the diet to thrive on it and I will continue to share that empirically supported knowledge in this blog and on my YouTube channel https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCQiXa89zxEQj5C3eUP2CurA. There is much more than just matter physics in going raw. Raw food cures body, mind, and environment and I would like to introduce as many people as possible to the idea of eating the way nature designed for every child of hers!
Raw Form of Life
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